Exploring Questions Related To The West Cork Islands Under The Theme Ocean & Environment.
The Ocean & Environment artists are Samuel Arnold Keane, William Bock, Eoin Heaney, Saoirse Higgins and Louise Manifold. Writer in residence for the project is Rachel Donnelly.
Illustration & design by Samuel Arnold Keane
Rachel Donnelly.
Project Writer in Residence
DISPATCH #1: Of Lobster Pots and Wind Farms.
Rachel is a writer and student of permaculture based in West Cork. She is particularly interested in the tensions and resonances between natural and human-made infrastructures, and public access to land. As writer in residence for Ocean and Environment, Rachel will be embedded in the local context, and in ongoing, site-specific dialogue with each of the participants. Her written reflections will follow the Ocean & Environment projects as they unfold over the coming year, connecting the themes of the project across the islands to wider questions of how to build resilience in the face of climate change.
Saoirse Higgins.
Location: Oileán Chléire
Oileán-ology
A year-long creative project in which artist and islanders are local “suirbhéirs,” mapping the visible and invisible energy orbits shaping their island in an era of climate precarity, producing an Island Almanac that blends creative surveys, charts, and films, drawing on the legacy of long-term island studies from Surtsey to the work of Praeger, McKenzie, and Tim Robinson.
Image credit: Infra red image of island edge, 2025
Samuel Arnold Keane.
Location: Bere, Long and Heir Islands
Cnósach
Retracing the pathways to forage, salvage and gather along west cork island coastlines.
Image credit: foraging with Samuel Arnold Keane, Heir Island 2025, photo Éoin Heaney
William Bock.
Location: Roaringwater bay
Every Knot
A project that is interested in the intangible knowledge around migration stories, shipping routes and ocean currents associated with this archipelago, connecting us to distant shores, ecologies and cultures.
Image credit: Every Knot, William Bock, Sugán rope project
Éoin Heaney.
Location: Sherkin & Bere Islands
Travelling Light
Travelling Light is a hybrid documentary that explores how the interconnected lives of people, animals, and ecosystems on the West Cork islands reflect broader patterns of migration, adaptation, and environmental transformation shaped by the ocean.
Image credit: Parish, hybrid documentary, 2023, Eóin Heaney
Interview Sherkin Sounds and the Surrounds https://on.soundcloud.com/HAcW9zYCg5Sre3R17
Eóin Heaney bio (PDF)
Louise Manifold.
Location: Dursey Island & Surrounds
A site-specific moving image project exploring Dursey Island and Bull Rock Lighthouse as sites of remoteness, memory, and ecological transformation in the face of technological and environmental change.
Image credit: Arches of Bull Rock, Digital Photograph, Louise Manifold 2025
Rachel Donnelly.
Location: Whiddy Island
25.5hrs on Whiddy Island
25.5 Hours on Whiddy Island is an experimental audio essay that responds to the first AGON conference, which took place on the island in summer 2025. Combining spoken text, field recordings and found sounds, the piece considers the tensions and resonances between natural ‘infrastructures’ and their human-made counterparts. What emerges is a deeper reflection on the question of physical agency in our environments – natural and human-made, physical and digital – and how this frames our political agency.
25.5 Hours on Whiddy Island is a collaboration between Eavan Aiken and Rachel Donnelly. It is due for radio broadcast in early 2026.
Image credit: Stile on Whiddy Island. Image: Rachel Donnelly
Advisory
The Ocean & Environment project is supported and informed by multiple people across the 7 inhabited West Cork Islands. These include our Project Partners & Island development agencies, and individuals that act as advisory and connectors; Róisín Ní Chonaill, Artist & Islander Oileán Chléire, Paula Quirk, Sherkin Islander & Artist, Anna Cosgrave, Heir Islander & activist, Oscar Daly, Fisherman & Community Worker Bere Island & Maeve Mulrennan Curator & Arts Officer.
Topics & Questions Include
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Resilience of coastal communities and means by which island populations interact with land and sea in the context of the climate crisis
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Does the climate crisis have an impact on contemporary island life and what would it mean for the islands when the facts of climate science materialise
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Plastic (including microplastics and oceanic pollution)
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Food, fishing, and farming
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Coastal erosion
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Ocean & environmental ethics
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Waste management, recycling, upcycling, and sustainability as a way of life on the islands
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Renewable energy
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Housing, dereliction, island habitability and the growth of island communities